Memorial Tournament: Fear factor gone

Sunday

May 26, 2013 at 12:01 AMMay 26, 2013 at 12:30 PM

When Tiger Woods last returned to the Memorial Tournament as its defending champion, three years ago, he was, as he is now, the top-ranked golfer in the world. Much has changed in those three years, though.

Bob Baptist, The Columbus Dispatch

When Tiger Woods last returned to the Memorial Tournament as its defending champion, three years ago, he was, as he is now, the top-ranked golfer in the world.

Much has changed in those three years, though.

On the course and off, Woods was revealed to be a flawed human being like the rest of us, and some of his fellow competitors did not let the opportunity to take advantage pass them by.

“They had three or four years of learning to win by themselves without having (him around),” Jack Nicklaus said, “and all of a sudden they’re not scared of somebody coming along and beating them.”

So it is as Muirfield Village Golf Club plays host to the 38th Memorial this week.

With four victories in seven starts this year, including three of his past four, Woods has reestablished himself as the player to beat on the PGA Tour.

But is he as invincible as he once seemed? Does he still intimidate rivals as much as in those 11 years in which he claimed 64 of his 78 tour victories, 13 of his 14 major championships and four of his record five Memorial titles?

“There’s probably some of that, (but) not to the degree that it was,” said Jimmy Roberts, a longtime golf broadcaster now working for NBC and Golf Channel.

“Although nobody wanted to talk about it back in the day, it truly existed. But I think what’s happened is, him going through that (21/2-year) period where he didn’t win a tournament, I think the light bulb went on with a lot of people saying, ‘Maybe we really can beat him.’?”

As a result, a band of players was able to establish itself on tour without getting its brains beat in by the best player since Nicklaus. They don’t have the scar tissue Woods left on his contemporaries.

“I think a lot of these kids who are playing against him now, they grew up watching him,” Roberts said. “To them, it’s a thrill to go against Tiger.”

Jim Furyk smiles at this.

“If they would have come out 10 years ago,” he said, “they would have gotten their brains beat out.”

What has changed, besides the younger guard around him and the fact that Woods, now 37 instead of 27, has his own scars?

First, Graeme McDowell said, “It’s not like Tiger back in ’97 when he dominated people with his length. He was playing a completely different golf course from everyone else.I think there are so many guys now who can decimate a golf course” with their length.

One of the reasons is that Woods, a workout fiend, inspired a generation of stronger, more fit golfers.

“There’s so many players who understand better fitness and longevity and injury prevention,” Nick Faldo said. “I don’t think Tiger has an advantage physically anymore. I think he did 10 years ago.”

Second, along with more strong and fit players, there are just more good ones because of the effect Woods had on popularizing the game.

“I would say that the tour, through a lot of Tiger’s career, did not have a lot of guys who could challenge him,” Nicklaus said. “I think you had basically only two, Phil (Mickelson) and Ernie (Els), who were challenging him (early in his career), and Vijay (Singh) was in there, too. But outside of that, there really wasn’t much there as relates to major championships.

“I think the tour has a really good crop of players playing now. There are as many good players in the game as there’s ever been.”

And, there is the reality that nothing lasts forever.

“Golf is a fickle game,” Roberts said. “I (wrote) a book about slumps a few years ago, and there was a chapter I did with Jack. Golf doesn’t work the way it did with Tiger over a decade. Even the greatest players of all time lose a lot more than they win. But people kind of got lulled into believing, I think, that (what he did) was normal. That wasn’t normal. Everybody slumps.

“So I think that (what happened to him) is more probably a reversion to the norm. The norm is, nobody owns this game. You maybe rent it for a while.”

So where does golf go from here? Clearly, the way Woods is playing, he has his mindset on owning it again.

“We’ve had a break from Tiger’s awesomeness,” Stuart Appleby said, “but I don’t think Tiger looks at his age for one second and thinks, ‘Oh, my time is running out.’ He won’t know his time is running out until it’s already run out. You don’t turn a guy like Michael Jordan off. There’s no switch.”

Woods obviously doesn’t think so, either. Asked in March whether he thinks he will ever be as good as he was, he didn’t hesitate.

“I don’t want to become as good as I once was,” he said, looking his questioner straight in the eye. “I want to become better.”

x-Wednesday is Military Appreciation Day and Junior Golf Day. Free admission for active, reserve or retired military and National Guard, spouses and immediate family. Free admission for youth 18 or under with a ticketed adult.

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